I hope you’ve been spending your Blasphemy Day thinking irreverent thoughts and committing sacrilegious acts. I’ve been at a humanist conference where we damned religion to heck, and I’m about to board an airplane where I will spend the flight putting finishing touches on a profane pro-science and anti-religion (anti-moderate religion, even) column for Free Inquiry, and I’ll try to find a few minutes to cuss out the non-existent angels who are not holding my airplane up in the sky.
But also, this is serious business. Consider the young Greek man who has been arrested for mocking a cleric; Alexander Aan, arrested in Indonesia for denying the existence of god; Alber Saber, arrested in Egypt for linking to a stupid movie that mocked Mohammed; Rimsah Masih, accused of desecrating the Quran and facing hateful death threats; Asia Bibi, sentenced to death for blasphemy in Pakistan; and too many others to list. Consider that the European Union has just called for “full respect of religion” and “the importance of respecting all prophets” — blasphemy laws are spreading.
So blaspheme today! Assert your right to deny bullshit loudly and honestly!
41 comments
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Caine, Divisitrix du mal
30 September 2012 at 11:14 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I’ve been cleaning since 6 a.m., completely forgot about Blasphemy Day! I will be sure to blaspheme the rest of the day.
Holms
30 September 2012 at 11:40 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Blasphemy day may as well be every day, as far as my spoken language is concerned :)
scaryduck
30 September 2012 at 11:57 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Oh, Jesus Cat-Licking Christ. I knew I had forgotten something. Blaspheming since 12 words ago.
simonsays
30 September 2012 at 11:58 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Hyperlink on the link to the Elder Pastitsios “young Greek man” is broken: http://www.centerforinquiry.net/blogs/entry/elder_pastitios_arrest_rekindles_debate_on_blasphemy_laws_in_greece/
Turtles
30 September 2012 at 12:08 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Goddammit, how did I not know about this?
Lou Doench
30 September 2012 at 12:14 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Fuck Buddha!
Ogvorbis: broken and cynical
30 September 2012 at 12:14 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I told Wife and Boy that today is Blasphemy Day. Boy said, “Done.” Wife said, “Goddamnit, why didn’t you tell me?”
It works.
Janine: Hallucinating Liar
30 September 2012 at 12:20 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I will not respect any religion that will not respect me. And because religion is not capable of respecting anyone, I do not see any reason to respect any religion.
Also, to steal from Ministry, Everyday Is Blasphemy Day.
Jesus Built My Hotrod
matlee
30 September 2012 at 12:25 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Blasphemy day is god damn awesome. I wish we would average had this back when I was a kid. Early Indoctrination to Lutheran school would have been a lot more fun.
Janine: Hallucinating Liar
30 September 2012 at 12:25 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I know I said this before but this must be the first song played at my funeral.
vaiyt
30 September 2012 at 12:44 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Blasphemy!
Blasphe-you!
Blasphe-everybody in the room!
a3kr0n
30 September 2012 at 12:45 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I religiously engage in blasphemy everyday, but today I’ll try harder. Muslims torching Buddhist temples in Bangladesh? And Child killed in Kenya church grenade attack
I blaspheme all the religions of the world!
Janine: Hallucinating Liar
30 September 2012 at 12:49 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Taut-PJ Harvey & John Parish
God’s Song(That’s Why I Love Mankind)-Randy Newman
Deus-The Sugarcubes
Dear God-XTC
God’s Away On Business-Cookie Monster
tbp1
30 September 2012 at 12:52 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
As I said over at Dispatches:
I struggle to understand why people who are confident in their religious beliefs are so often desirous of making it a crime for someone to hurt their widdle fee-fees. You’d think they aren’t really all that confident after all, and need the force of law to defend that which they cannot defend themselves in the marketplace of ideas. But that couldn’t be, could it?
markr1957 (Patent Pending)
30 September 2012 at 1:00 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Jeebus on a stick – I nearly missed out on this!
opposablethumbs
30 September 2012 at 1:05 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Every day is blasphemy day. Fuck the whole bloody lot of ‘em, load of people-hating shite misogynistic homophobic xenophobic bollocks that they are.
Ogvorbis: broken and cynical
30 September 2012 at 1:11 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Does sex with no possibility of pregnancy count as blasphemy?
irisvanderpluym
30 September 2012 at 1:21 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Ogvorbis: pretty sure anything awesome counts as blasphemy.
Zugswang
30 September 2012 at 1:34 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I’ll continue my tradition of not harassing/beating/imprisoning/attempting to murder my next door neighbor because the god they don’t believe in didn’t tell them to not mow their lawn on the day someone else’s god said they couldn’t.
Kamaka
30 September 2012 at 2:02 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
OK, this is easy.
All of you worthless, invisible, do-nothing gods:
Punish me. Go ahead, punish me for *thinking* my blasphemous *thoughts*.
I’m feeling masochistic, I want to be punished.
I’m waiting…
c’mon jeebus, beat me…
waiting…
Shit, I guess I’ll have to go back to making obscene art.
Fucking worthless, stupid gods.
slowdjinn
30 September 2012 at 2:07 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Janine
Your God’s Away On Business – Cookie Monster link seems to be broken.
sparks
30 September 2012 at 2:07 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
While the comments here are always amusing, what can one person do, really, to make a difference in the face of so many people who believe such bullshit?
Fer christ fucking sakes we, as a species, have got to get a hold on this tendency of ours to buy into any and all bullshit and figure out a way to make it fucking well stop, or it will be the end of us eventually.
What the hell can we do?
Are we to forever remain in this intellectual dark ages drawn and quartered between an unpleasant truth and a sugar coated lie regarding the nature of reality?
Goddamn that all to hell!
One last time: How the hell does one reach people who are afflicted with this ‘true believer’ sickness?
Inquiring minds concerned about the future of our species really want to fucking well know.
Janine: Hallucinating Liar
30 September 2012 at 2:10 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Thank you for correcting that, slowdjinn.
Watch it.
Watch right now!
It will make you very happy!
cry4turtles
30 September 2012 at 2:15 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I really need to shout this–GAWD IS PRETEND!!! How’s that for blasphemy?
Audley Z. Darkheart (liar and scoundrel)
30 September 2012 at 2:17 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Oggie:
I was wondering about masturbation, myself.
cry4turtles
30 September 2012 at 2:18 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Oh, and I see there’s another admirer of the shelled ones here. Sigh…
slowdjinn
30 September 2012 at 2:22 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
As an atheist, wearing mixed fibre underpants, living in a converted former dry methodist chapel with a fridge full of grog, pork products and shellfish, whose partner is divorced and often stays the night for unmarried nookie …it’s just another day for me.
Nevertheless I’ll put the effort in. *drumroll*
ALL GODS ARE FRAUDS!
ayethenkyew.
slowdjinn
30 September 2012 at 2:25 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Janine – I did, and it did thankyou! 8-)
Kamaka
30 September 2012 at 2:26 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Pretty kinky thinking *how did mary get preggers?* thoughts.
It should be the ultimate big O masturbating to “impregnate me, god”.
Kamaka
30 September 2012 at 2:33 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
oh god oh god Mary Mother of God OH GAWD…
WMDKitty (Always growing and learning)
30 September 2012 at 2:59 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Oh, goddammit, I have no idea what I’m doing for Blasphemy Day. (Though I had a nice lie-in this morning.)
WMDKitty (Always growing and learning)
30 September 2012 at 3:02 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Oh, here we go! I posted this on Facebook.
WMDKitty (Always growing and learning)
30 September 2012 at 3:02 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Crap. Borked the link.
Dick the Damned
30 September 2012 at 3:16 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I send this poem to religious folk who are pushing their nonsense on others.
Here’s a Hudibrastic verse on woo,
for superstitious folk like you.
The Christian’s Jehovah, an Almighty God,
is a capricious and cantankerous clod;
and, so far as I can tell,
the Christian often is as well.
Confused by dogma, the god-fearing fogey
can’t fathom the nature of that Bible Bogey.
Is it a father, his son, and an apotropaic ghost too?
Well, it should be obvious that’s ridiculous woo.
Yet Christians claim this god, in its Empyrean lair,
is omniscient, omnipotent, benevolent and fair,
but, with the unresolved problem of theodicy,
their dogma is eristic, Christian idiocy.
The Jew’s Yahweh, that meshuggeneh, the jerk,
set Jews strict rules on when to work,
how to dress, and what to sup or sip,
and giving baby boys the snip.
The myths of Bronze Age, goat-herding nomads,
have them, metaphorically, by the gonads.
The Moslem’s Allah, a fierce great djinn,
demands under ‘Islam’, literally, ‘Submission’.
Apostasy is treated just like a crime;
they’ll threaten to kill you, to keep you in line,
and if you dare draw Mohammad in a comic cartoon,
there’ll be riots and killings from here to Khartoum.
Hindu, Sikh, Jain, and Buddhist,
Zoroastrian, Baha’i, Mormon, and Scientologist,
Confucianist, Shintoist, and Taoist too,
Spiritualist, Wiccan, and the New Ager into woo.
Yea, verily, those of each and every religion,
are mired in the miasma of superstition.
The gods from the Bronze Age up to modern times,
and from the Arctic down to tropical climes,
have inspired theology that’s unsubstantiated twaddle,
on what an invisible and silent god’ll
devise as its inscrutable, eschatological plan,
but all the gods were made in the image of man.
So, why should yours be the “One True Faith”,
in a magic, phantasmagorical wraith?
Belief, without evidence, is just plain crazy,
ignorant, stupid, or thoughtlessly lazy.
When evolution happens, it’s due to Natural Selection,
so life derives no purpose, at a theistic god’s direction.
The evidence is we have just this one life,
with all its pleasures, challenges, toil, and strife.
As social beings we evolved our moral sensibility,
combatting selfishness, lust, and venality.
Religion misunderstands, and so invokes the supernatural,
while Humanism strives to promote the good and rational.
Here’s why I care about your crazy, faith-based thinking:
I object to religion’s anachronistic social sanctioning.
Aristotle’s eudemonia, (human flourishing), conflicts
with the social engineering that religion inflicts
on societies that should democratically endorse
rationality-based ethics, mores, and laws.
But there’s no need for you to blame your genes;
your religion’s the fault of social memes.
They have a life entirely of their own,
purpose, to them, being quite unknown.
So give them up, that you may be free
to revel in your humanity.
Kamaka
30 September 2012 at 3:24 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
@ WMDKitty (Always growing and learning)
You might be needing some *FORGIVENESS* for a link fail, but the content redeems you.
As an agent of gawdamity, I (ahhhchoo) forgives you.
Jesus Krist on a pogo stick, people tell me I look just like him.
GC and JC both.
markr1957 (Patent Pending)
30 September 2012 at 4:00 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Watching the Saints vs. Packers game is more than enough to encourage blasphemy – jeez, this Saints defense is god-awful! They haven’t got a fucking prayer!
ednaz
30 September 2012 at 4:29 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Jane Curtin reading the bible.
Charlie Foxtrot
30 September 2012 at 9:19 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Oh well, missed it. So from here in Day-after-Blasphemy-Day land, I just found this Onion article linked from ‘Jesus and Mo’.
No one murdered because of this image
Its a bit naughty… so I’ll slap a NSFW sticker on that link. (Depending on where you work, I s’pose. Obviously OK over at the Onion…)
johnhodges
1 October 2012 at 7:49 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
The purest form of blasphemy:
“Your religion is false. You have been swindled.”
scottplumer
1 October 2012 at 8:08 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I worked on the Sabbath, does that count? Unfortunately, I worked at a festival of gospel music, but I did lust after some of the performers. Mmmm, forbidden fruit…
lindamccann
2 October 2012 at 1:00 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
OH NO!!! Sikhs are now demanding a ban on JK Rowling’s new book because of a character in it! You couldnae make it up!